How are your parishes doing?

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dochawk said:
We’re anything but ethnic, and growing. See my post on byzcath in a day or two, but we may be facing a situation where we could grow at a dangerous rate.

We do have a handful of actual ruthenians. I think we have a slight RC majority, and I’ve lost count of how many different kinds of ECOC, , EO, and OO. (come Otto think of it, the vigil may have a ru thhenian majority, but the average age is over 60).

hawk
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Is your parish’s Divine Liturgy in English or in a mixture of languages?
 
andrewstx:
If you are catholic, you should go back to the Rc parish, and go to mass there. You can become Byzantine Catholic Canonically and spiritually and just go to an RC parish. Once again, if you are catholic, you really need to go to a catholic church, regardless of rite. This is an extremely important matter. I hope I understood you right.
Praying for you.:byzsoc:
 
ConstantineTG said:
We’re a heavily ethnic parish. We get a ton of people during the big religious-cultural holidays that Ukrainians celebrate. And people do come to the sales because its one of the few places to buy Ukrainian food.
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I had a feeling - that’s why I inquired about your church and neighboring churches.

As Eastern Christians, our ethnicity is both a blessing and a curse it seems. It is an attraction for some, a turn-off for others. The food sales often provide both recognition and good income streams, but also reinforce the notion that ours is an ethnic church, and others may not fit it. Yet, when you get them in the door for Divine Liturgy, its usually a different story!

As compared to the UGCC, us Ruthenians have probably “hidden” our ethnic heritage a bit more, and rarely have OCS DL’s, let alone any of the other “major” languages that the Rusyns would have picked up. But I don’t think that has necessarily helped all that much either.

Our church is also struggling to keep similar income streams going, and the challenge clearly is getting the younger generations involved. Modern work schedules and career demands don’t often cooperate.

FWIW - I grew up in a parish with a married (with children) parish, a rarity for my generation. Our Pani ran the kitchen and all such fund raisers with passion, zeal, love and great success. Another argument for the married priesthood and related tradition?

No easy answers, but let’s trade notes as time goes on …
 
ConstantineTG said:
I don’t know. We’re a heavily ethnic parish. We get a ton of people during the big religious-cultural holidays that Ukrainians celebrate. And people do come to the sales because its one of the few places to buy Ukrainian food.
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What language(s) do you use in your liturgies? Also I’d like to see your website if your parish has one.
 
dcointin said:
What language(s) do you use in your liturgies? Also I’d like to see your website if your parish has one.
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English and Ukrainian, although we’d do a bilingual Liturgy for Great Feasts, over the entire Summer, and other occasions where its a benefit to have the two groups together in one Liturgy.

I’ll PM you the website.
 
ConstantineTG said:
English and Ukrainian, although we’d do a bilingual Liturgy for Great Feasts, over the entire Summer, and other occasions where its a benefit to have the two groups together in one Liturgy.

I’ll PM you the website.
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Could you do a language class(🤓)?
Just an idea, albeit a bad one.

EDIT: :newidea: ICONS! Make icons and sell them!
 
ConstantineTG said:
English and Ukrainian, although we’d do a bilingual Liturgy for Great Feasts, over the entire Summer, and other occasions where its a benefit to have the two groups together in one Liturgy.
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Is everything bilingual, or is it a bit in English and then a bit in Ukrainian?
 
John_of_Patmos said:
Could you do a language class(🤓)?
Just an idea, albeit a bad one.

EDIT: :newidea: ICONS! Make icons and sell them!
Click to expand...
I can’t draw to save my life.

We do have a “heritage school” tied in with the catechism. So we get kids for a couple of hours on Friday night and for 1 hour they learn Ukrainian stuff, and the other hour we teach Catechism (I teach Catechism, can’t help with the Ukrainian stuff).
 
Splagchnizomai said:
Is everything bilingual, or is it a bit in English and then a bit in Ukrainian?
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The priest would switch languages between prayers and sometimes midway through a litany. The readings, Gospel, Lord’s Prayer and Prayer before Communion are done twice, once in each language. Some hymns are switched between two languages (like the Cherubic Hymn when its repeated).
 
I think the best way really to keep the parish going for a long time is an increase in membership. But that would mean opening the parish up and making it more attractive to non-Ukrainians. I don’t think people there would want that though.
 
ConstantineTG said:
I think the best way really to keep the parish going for a long time is an increase in membership. But that would mean opening the parish up and making it more attractive to non-Ukrainians. I don’t think people there would want that though.
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Again, for many years that has been the Ruthenian approach, more or less, yet has not really yielded any appreciable increase in numbers of faithful. In fact, more often than not, it is both our young people and the converts from the Latin Church that most often request more frequent usage of Old Church Slavonic in worship.

FWIW - we actually picked up a few more families in our parish after hosting this past year’s Thanksgiving Eve Multi-faith Prayer Service, an annual event sponsored by an informal committee of clergy (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) in our town. We actually drew a lot of praise from the Jewish community for use of the Psalms and our chant - no converts, though!

How active is your parish priest in the local religious community?
 
ByzCathCantor said:
Again, for many years that has been the Ruthenian approach, more or less, yet has not really yielded any appreciable increase in numbers of faithful. In fact, more often than not, it is both our young people and the converts from the Latin Church that most often request more frequent usage of Old Church Slavonic in worship.

FWIW - we actually picked up a few more families in our parish after hosting this past year’s Thanksgiving Eve Multi-faith Prayer Service, an annual event sponsored by an informal committee of clergy (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) in our town. We actually drew a lot of praise from the Jewish community for use of the Psalms and our chant - no converts, though!

How active is your parish priest in the local religious community?
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Not sure, really. I know they do some prison ministry and stuff, but I’m not aware of any active work being done in the greater community (which by that I mean the open community and not just the community of Ukrainians). I do hope we get involved with things like ProLife and stuff.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Not sure, really. I know they do some prison ministry and stuff, but I’m not aware of any active work being done in the greater community (which by that I mean the open community and not just the community of Ukrainians). I do hope we get involved with things like ProLife and stuff.
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That kind of interactive involvement really does help. We are fortunate to have a priest who is very good at community outreach and interfaith relations (including Catholic - East & West), and it really does make a difference. The less we are seen as “different” and the more we are seen as “similar, yet unique”, the better.

See if you can identify a bi-ritual priest in the community (or at least in the local RC diocese) and ask him to celebrate a Divine Liturgy. Invite others to attend. The bi-ritualists always do a great job of catechesis in their homilies.

We were lucky in that until a few months ago, we actually had a local RC auxiliary bishop with bi-ritual faculties (Bishop Libasci - see bio @ catholicnh.org/about/bishop/). He loved the Byzantine tradition, and yearned for opportunities to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. He was recently appointed Bishop of Manchester, NH and celebrated a DL in our church before leaving for his new pastoral assignment (not many Ruthenian churches in NH, I’m afraid). He was quite popular among RCs and ECs in our area, and this Divine Liturgy was very well attended.
 
ConstantineTG said:
I think the best way really to keep the parish going for a long time is an increase in membership. But that would mean opening the parish up and making it more attractive to non-Ukrainians. I don’t think people there would want that though.
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I would go…
Could you set up a deal with a monastery were you could resell icons, they would get partial payment? Do you have a religious store? The EO Cathedral in my area has the best religious store for EO/ECs in my area.
 
John_of_Patmos said:
andrewstx:
If you are catholic, you should go back to the Rc parish, and go to mass there. You can become Byzantine Catholic Canonically and spiritually and just go to an RC parish. Once again, if you are catholic, you really need to go to a catholic church, regardless of rite. This is an extremely important matter. I hope I understood you right.
Praying for you.:byzsoc:
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I have moved to another town, one with only one RC parish,and honestly the culture their is completely foreign to me.

Think guitars, mariachi bands, liturgy in Spanish where English speakers are disinfranchised. That is Our Lady of Lourdes.

Now if I could find a latin chruch with the extrodinary form Mass, that would be perfect. I know more Latin than Spanish.
 
:crossrc:
andrewstx said:
I have moved to another town, one with only one RC parish,and honestly the culture their is completely foreign to me.

Think guitars, mariachi bands, liturgy in Spanish where English speakers are disinfranchised. That is Our Lady of Lourdes.

Now if I could find a latin chruch with the extrodinary form Mass, that would be perfect. I know more Latin than Spanish.
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try talking to the RC priest about your concerns.
:crossrc: John
 
John_of_Patmos said:
I would go…
Could you set up a deal with a monastery were you could resell icons, they would get partial payment? Do you have a religious store? The EO Cathedral in my area has the best religious store for EO/ECs in my area.
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That actually is not a bad idea. At the moment I am even unsure if there is a good Eastern bookstore in the area. There are a number of Orthodox Churches around (there’s a Ukrainian Orthodox, Romanian and Serbian very close to our parish, and more throughout the metro area) that could also be potential customers. But I am not sure if the parish is interested in that, I will ask my priest and speak to my bishop about it. I’m willing to give the other Orthodox parishes a call and let them know they can come to our place for their needs.
 
ConstantineTG said:
The priest would switch languages between prayers and sometimes midway through a litany. The readings, Gospel, Lord’s Prayer and Prayer before Communion are done twice, once in each language. Some hymns are switched between two languages (like the Cherubic Hymn when its repeated).
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Very interesting. Do you find that this is common in other parishes like yours?
 
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